Thursday, March 19, 2009

After several years of buying out the stock of Radio Shack's slow blow fuses every time I bought a new project with an electrical problem I finally put together an alternative. I bought a 3amp, 4amp, 5amp, 8amp and 20amp circuit breakers from Ed at Great Plains Electronics. Notice that there is a hole not filled. That will hold a .5amp breaker that I forgot to order to handle the .5amp and 1amp fuses needs. The box is the $3.99 project box from Radio Shack. Please forgive the uneven holes drilled...the device is more for function over form :)

The breakers have a mean time to failure of around 1000 overloads so it should last a long time.

The leads with alligator clips will connect via molex connectors on the back to the correct amperage circuit breaker. I made the leads about 4' long so that I can have the box near me while troubleshooting. I thought about using a blown fuse instead of the alligator clips, but decided against it as being to fragile. I'll label the breakers front and back.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

"Way of the Rodent" posted some really cool paper craft arcade games. I put the pacman together in a couple of minutes, and printed out the rest for one of my wife's second grade students that's into origami.